'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎14r] (27/72)

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consciousness of being naked than Adam did in Eden, the new comer introduced himself
as a young chief of the Sa-y&h whose name was If-lye-yah, the son of Hasscln. Of course
he was made a guest of on the spot. Unfortunately, while he was led in one direction, his
wiry mare was taken to where the barley was kept. This nearly made him start off on
her back. Bedouin fashion. It all seemed to him a trick to separate him from his mare,
and then make a prisoner of him! Not till she was set to her corn at the tent door, with
the halter rope in his own hand, did her owner really take to his pipe. The S&-yS.h are a
small but warlike sept, or clan, of the Shammar, mustering about a thousand spears.
Their principal Shekh is Meyzar-As-Sudeyd. For a long time he and all his people have
been living as refugees among the Ubaid, without, however, like them turning cultivators.
If-lye-yah was then on his way back from trying to arrange with his Shammar con
nections for the return of the Sa-y&h to their own side of the river. After eating bread,
and learning more in a night of the world's condition than during all his previous life, the
young Shekh very gladly undertook to play the host or guide in his turn, and bring one
into communication with the Sa-yah Shekhs. It was for the sake of this that the kdjila
was halted at Tikrit. It seems most desirable that the British Resident in Turkish Arabia A term used by the British officials to describe the territory roughly corresponding to, but not coextensive with, modern-day Iraq under the control of the Ottoman Empire.
should have at his command all the information he can gather, and all the personal know
ledge he can acquire, in directions like this. But these desert politics are too local, and
too variable, to be worth dilating on in a general report.
By this time one thing was plain : and that was the difficulty of moving freely over
Difficulty of keeping horses effi- countries like A1 Hawija and A1 Jazira with horses only ;
dent in Arabian marching. especially civilised horses, so to call them, corn-fed, and
accustomed to be regularly watered. A horse cannot be loaded like a dromedary with
one's food and blankets. Very little extra weight, if it do not even bring the saddle down
on the spine, will make it gall some other part. In districts like these it would take very
vigilant and experienced officers, and very carefully taught riders, to keep a cavalry regi
ment moving rapidly for more than a few days at a time. With mounted followers who had
never learned to ride, except in the sense of sticking on, and who, instead of getting off
and walking when a little tired, would take up all sorts of positions on their saddles, there
were several sore backs the first march out of Baghdad.
Moreover, to keep leather saddlery of European patterns serviceable in a dry and
„ dusty country required more care than is possible, with the
European saddlery. J J *
whole day, and every day, spent on the move. English
saddles, too, unless removed directly the animal is picqueted, and before his back has had
time to cool, run a daily risk of being destroyed, owing to the invincible tendency of
every eastern horse, after the nature of the pachyderms, to throw himself on the ground
and roll the first thing when the march is over.
Tiknt being only four days by road from Baghdad, the worst cases of sore back were
K^fila curtailed. what is called " evacuated " before the kdfila started again.
Section VII.—Through A1 Hawija to Kir-kuk.
The first march from Tikrit was one of about eight hours, north by east, across an
undulating tract of uninhabited prairie. Being on the
mail route between Constantinople and Persia via Mosul,
a well marked track, converted here and there even into a tolerable military road, offered
itself, in place of the ocean-like surface of A1 Jazira. The halting place for the night was
In-khe-lah, where a spring of barely drinkable water makes for itself an oasis, thickly
carpeted with verdure, and half hidden hy bulrushes.
At no great distance off, the Tigris bursts through the Hamnn range, which consists
of several great ridges of sand-stone rock, with a maximum
Hamrin mountains. o{ five hundred feet<
Here for the first time is felt a new element-the Kurds-in the congeries of
nationalities spreading itself over Asiatic Turkey. Kur-
Kurdist^n. dist&n indeed, a word formed on a Persian mould, is a con-
venient rather than scientific geographical term. For not alone is but a very small portion
of the so -called Kurdistan peopled exclusively by Kurds, but for several centunes past,
while about a million and a half of this high spirited race have owned a wavenng alleg.ance
Tthe Sultan at least three quarters of a million more have called the ShSh their master.
The natural result is that both Governments alike find it most difficult to prevent them
from asserting by frequent relapses into turbulence, or even bngandage. the.r hered.tary